


A Clock of Gold and Pearls

by Lomonaaeren



Series: July Celebration Fics 2018 [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Harry is 17 when the relationship begins, Horcruxes, M/M, Minor Draco Malfoy/Ginny Weasley, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-12 19:02:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15346497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Lucius knew that, although Harry loved him, he also suffered private doubts over being in love with the man who had endangered two of his best friends in his second year and fought on the other side of the war. Never let it be said that Malfoys don’t make extravagant gestures for those they love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my July Celebration fics. This will have a second part, to be posted tomorrow.

****Lucius looked up at the portrait of his grandfather, Hadrian Malfoy, who had a slight sneer on his face as though he despised the painter. He sat in a green chair near the fireplace Lucius recognized as being part of the Rose Drawing Room now. His left hand rested on the head of a tazi, the sleek hunting dogs he had kept as Lucius kept peacocks. His other cradled a clock, magnificently drawn in pearls and gold.

Unlike the other portraits in the Manor, this one had never moved or spoken. Lucius knew why, a secret passed down to his father Abraxas and entrusted to him in a letter among his father’s papers when he died unexpectedly. In turn, Lucius would pass the secret down to his own son.

But right now, he intended to use it.

Lucius studied the portrait one more time, finding the clues that pointed in the right direction. Then he turned and strode to the Rose Drawing Room.

*

It was after another evening when Harry had come home, tired and discouraged instead of energized when talking with his friends, that Lucius had decided.

“You argued about me again.” Lucius laid his paper aside. The _Daily Prophet_ rarely had anything worth reading anyway, but Lucius amused himself on evenings when Harry was out by spotting the inaccuracies and spelling mistakes.

“Yeah.” Harry took his cloak off and then almost ran across to him and kissed Lucius desperately. Lucius reached up to rest his hands on the back of Harry’s neck.

“I apologized.”

“I know. I think Hermione’s ready to accept, but Ron doesn’t think it’s worth months of his sister being the victim of the diary and you fighting in the Department of Mysteries. He tried to say it didn’t make up for Hermione being Petrified, either, but she shot him down. That’s why I think she’s ready to accept.”

“I offered them gold.”

Harry groaned and leaned his forehead against Lucius’s. Lucius could feel how much the lightning bolt scar had faded, until now it was a truly ordinary symbol, nothing more than that, a line of skin. “I know. That just made it worse. And yes, I _know_ about the old pure-blood traditions that say it would have made up for the lost education Hermione and Ginny had and the wounds we sustained in that fight. But none of them follow those traditions.”

“I—have said that you could walk away.”

Lucius did not offer that option lightly, but it weighed still more heavily on him that Harry should come home with lines scrawled in his face, that his friends should not accept him dating Lucius even after two years.

“ _No_!” Harry grabbed Lucius and buried his face in his neck. Lucius softly inhaled the scent of sweat from Harry’s nape. “I don’t want to do that. _Ever_. It’s okay. I’ll spend some more time with Ernie and his lot. They’re not as close to me as Ron and Hermione and Ginny, but—they understand more. And honestly, right now that understanding is worth more than yet another _moral_ argument.”

Lucius nodded, but said nothing, and let Harry talk about one of the stories from the _Prophet_ that he had spotted the same inaccuracies as Lucius in. All the time, Lucius watched his face and the way the lines there never entirely went away.

_I must do something to make up for what I did._

*

Lucius sat in the chair that now stood in the Rose Drawing Room in the place where Grandfather Hadrian’s once had, balanced his right hand at the same height and distance in the air that it would be if it was resting on the head of a tazi, and reached out with his left towards the mantel.

He felt a shiver and heard a _click_. When he turned his head, as he had known it would, the clock resisted in his head. It would never be real unless someone of Malfoy blood sat exactly where Grandfather Hadrian’s portrait had sat, in the same position.

And even someone of Malfoy blood could wind the clock only once.

Lucius studied its face for a moment. It was beautiful, the golden numbers shimmering, the pearl-outlined hands pointing to what looked like midnight and three-o’clock. It would take a much closer reading to become aware that words indicating years, months, and phases of the moon were also inscribed on the clock.

Lucius exhaled slowly. He turned the clock over. Out of the back stuck a large key. He would have to wind it with his destination and goals already firmly in mind.

The clock was not a Time-Turner. It would take someone back considerably further and allow them to make changes to the timeline that would be impossible for someone using a lesser device. But it would keep time from cracking and falling apart if the Malfoy was absolutely firm of purpose.

 _This is what you want?_ Lucius could almost imagine his father asking him.

 _It is,_ Lucius thought, and fixed his mind on the destination. He didn’t glance at the notes that lay beside him, notes that translated the time and place he wanted to go back to into the numbers of turns the key would need. He already knew what they said.

He began to wind the clock.

The key stuck at first, and clicked jerkily from place to place inside the clock even when Lucius managed to turn it. Lucius could hear numerous ticking sounds as he made the motions. The flow of the key abruptly became smoother and softer, at the same moment as the world around him began to blur at the edges. Round shapes like falling pearls traveled past his eyes.

 _It will try to distract you,_ Father’s letter had said.

Lucius kept looking at the key. He had three more turns to go, and it was hot in his hand.

One, and the clock began to vibrate. But walls were fading into being around him, and Lucius could see the shapes of people in robes and cloaks walking back and forth. He smiled in satisfaction.

Two, and the clock began to rotate in place—or try. Lucius didn’t allow it to actually do so, as that would have ripped the key out of his hand. Instead, he concentrated, and saw ginger hair on some of the milling wizards, and books on the high shelves around them.

Three, and the world around him twisted. Lucius held out his hand, because there was something in it already, a slim shape pressing insistently down. Lucius curved his fingers and held both the clock and the thin thing trying to escape.

A snap and a shiver traveled through Lucius’s body, and he vanished.

*

And the world reasserted itself.

Lucius glanced around, and nodded. He had come back to Flourish and Blotts on the day of the book signing by that fool Lockhart. He had replaced his younger body for that day, and already, his memories were in flux, banging and convulsing inside his head, trying to make him become the Lucius Malfoy who belonged here, the one who had no foreknowledge of what was to come.

The one who was holding Tom Riddle’s Horcrux diary with the intention to slip it into little Ginny Weasley’s cauldron, not keep it out.

Lucius clamped down his will on his brain and held it still. The clock would only bring him back for scattered moments in time, not for long stretches. That was fine. This was the beginning of correcting the mistakes he had made with regards to Harry’s friends.

He stepped back, out of sight of Arthur Weasley, and slipped the diary into his pocket. Then he turned and strode out of the bookshop as if disgusted with the crowd.

“Father?”

Lucius turned around. Draco had followed him, and he was frowning at him as if he didn’t know why Lucius had hurried outside when they were here to buy his schoolbooks. Which, of course, he had no _reason_ to know.

“I am sorry, son,” Lucius said, and gave a shudder that felt theatrical, while he studied Draco’s face in wonder he couldn’t express. It looked so much more real than it ever did in photographs from the same time period. “I could not be around such a concentrated mass of vulgarity any longer.”

Draco began to smile. “The _Weasleys_ are the ones who make it vulgar, don’t they, Father?”

Lucius nodded, and had an idea at the same time. “Of course they do. But one of the most disgusting things they do is be open about it.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

 _Did I really have him call me that?_ But Draco would not—yet—have been altered by Lucius’s return to the past, so he had to accept that this was a faithful rendition of it. Lucius raised his eyebrows a little. “Do you not think it a touch— _déclassé_ —when a Weasley begins yelling insults at you?”

Draco bowed his head a little, his eyebrows pressing down above his nose. “Well, I reckon. But I thought that’s what we were supposed to do, Father.”

“The upper class may have an obligation to abide by the customs of their inferiors on occasion.” Lucius waved one hand. “This is not one of those we should imitate. We should keep our eyes fixed on our goals and purposes, which do not include struggles with anyone we see as beneath us. Physical _or_ mental struggles,” he added, making Draco’s eyes widen a little.

“So—I shouldn’t fight with Weasley, sir?”

“If one of them attacks you first, then you may of course defend yourself,” Lucius decided after a moment’s inner debate. “But do think about how it looks to others when they see you sneering at someone that you supposedly hold yourself above, Draco. You are _descending to their level_. Is that the impression you want to give?”

Draco looked a little ill. “Not at all, sir!”

“Then keep this policy in mind for future confrontations,” Lucius said, and studied the books in his son’s arms. “You have all the books that you need?”

“Yes, even the ones by Lockhart.”

Lucius chuckled and led Draco home, starting a conversation about how Draco might make the best of a Defense Against the Dark Arts class in which he would learn nothing useful. The world was already softening around him again. He had done what he had come to this piece of the timeline to do, and more besides, and the conversation he was having with Draco could easily blend into the one he would have had with his son on the way home, anyway.

There was a single chime that seemed to make his body ripple, and he was gone.

*

Lucius sighed and wrung his hand for a moment. He had finished writing the last of the letters that he would post to Potter—as he was right now—throughout the school year, letters from a “mysterious friend” who had something very Dark and important and belonging to You-Know-Who to dispose of, but feared to trust the Ministry. The letters were designed to catch the younger Potter’s attention and inflame his curiosity, while discouraging him from showing them to any of his friends or professors.

When the right moment came, Lucius would hint at the existence of the Chamber of Secrets. Lockhart was still at the school, so he thought Harry’s Parseltongue would still be revealed. Push Harry just a little, from a slightly different direction, and Lucius could convince him that the idea to open the Chamber of Secrets, challenge the basilisk, and meet up with his “friend” to destroy the diary were all his own.

And he could do it without any trauma to Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, or the other Petrified Muggleborns at the school in his first time.

_Why did I never think of this before?_

_Because you never cared about them enough before,_ his own memories reminded him with a rap that felt like a rap his own father might have delivered to his knuckles.

Lucius gave a breathless snort. That was true enough. He gathered up the letters and prepared for the next leap through time. He would post them on certain designated dates, and then leap to others when he could reasonably expect to receive Potter’s letters back. He honestly thought he wouldn’t have to write very many new ones in response to those letters, only change the phrasing of a pre-written one now and then.

He knew Harry that well.

And he was doing this for him, far more than for his friends.

*

“You’re going to be with me when I go in to fight the basilisk, Mr. Malfoy?”

Lucius had never intended to be anywhere else. He smiled at the young Potter before him, relieved to find he felt no attraction. Harry, _his_ Harry, was simply too different from this scruffy little bright-eyed boy.

“Of course. Do you think a twelve-year-old should face such beasts alone?”

“I dunno, I know some people who would have let me,” Potter muttered, and turned to the sink decorated with the small snake before Lucius could remark on that. He hissed. The sink descended into the floor, and the wailing ghost popped out of a cubicle behind them to see what they were doing.

 _I hate them too, Harry,_ Lucius thought, and followed the young Potter down into the tunnels beneath the school with undeniable fascination. Harry had described this for him, of course, but not nearly as often as Lucius wanted to listen to it. And it was entirely different to feel the crunch of bones beneath his own feet and stare at a basilisk’s shed skin.

And the enormous serpents with emerald eyes that guarded the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, for that matter. Lucius looked as carefully as he could in the moments before Harry hissed the door open. He wanted to preserve this particular memory in a Pensieve later and study the snakes more closely to see what they were like.

As the doors opened and they stepped into the Chamber, Lucius wrinkled his nose. Seeing the legendary place for himself was one thing, smelling it another.

“Ugh,” Potter said as they turned to face the statue that legend said was of Salazar Slytherin.

Lucius felt his lips twitch. _There_ was his own Harry’s spontaneous honesty. “Yes,” he said. “Well. I see no basilisk in this part of the Chamber. Perhaps it is behind the statue?” He took the diary from his pocket. The cover tried to burn him. Lucius sighed and raised the spells he had learned before he came to this timeline. The Horcrux had tried to seize control of him and Draco when they lived in the same house before. Any Malfoy could protect himself from such effects of Dark Arts.

_That I never thought of getting rid of it before…_

Lucius flicked the thought away from him. He was here now, and he would accomplish the task he had set himself.

“But how would we make it come out?” Potter was prowling in a slow circle, his raised wand illuminating pillars and the outlines of the large stones set into the walls in flickering flashes. “I mean, I suppose I can’t stand here and say—” And he gave a long hiss in Parseltongue that Lucius couldn’t understand any more than he had when back in his own time.

The jaw of the statue trembled. Lucius immediately pulled Potter behind him, shaking his head. Of course Harry’s younger self would also preserve the same dumb luck.

The basilisk that slid forth was a glittering snake so deep a green that Lucius’s eyes nearly refused to comprehend it, and wanted to take it for black. But Lucius’s mind was more sensible. From an inner, expanded pocket of his robe, he pulled the Stunned and bound rooster and cast it to the floor of the Chamber.

“ _Reenervate! Solis_!”

The rooster clapped its wings at once and lifted its head to crow at the small conjured sun Lucius had set above its head. The sound seemed to go on far longer than it should, echoed by a rising and swelling hiss that was, presumably, the hiss of the dying basilisk.

Lucius felt the floor shake as the basilisk settled to it. He glanced up and blinked, quickly. The snake did lie on the floor in front of him, and it was so much more enormous than he’d ever thought it would be. He swallowed back sickness and turned to face Potter, who was standing next to him with his mouth open.

“Are you all right?” Lucius asked.

“Of course I am. It didn’t touch me. I just—I never thought something so big could be killed just like that, you know?”

Lucius nodded, understanding, and moved forwards to circle the basilisk’s head. He flinched the first time he saw the dead, staring golden eyes, but they couldn’t harm him without the basilisk’s will behind them, either. The mouth was open, which spared him having to find a spell that would do it for him. He bent down and slashed his wand sideways, a modified Cutting Curse that severed the connection between the fang and the gum.

He lifted the tooth itself out carefully. Being pricked with the tip might still result in death, especially when he could feel the clamor starting in his head again. This timeline knew he didn’t belong here and was trying hard to get rid of him.

When he took the diary from his pocket, the pages began to flip. Lucius smiled coldly. It seemed that the shade within could feel when true death was close. It explained why it had never panicked before when Lucius had it close to a drawing room fire or other ordinary danger.

“Mr. Malfoy?”

Lucius tilted his head in response to Potter’s question, but continued advancing on the diary. He wasn’t going to give it a chance to snare a victim this time.

“Is it fair to kill something like this without talking to it first? You said it _can_ talk. Is it right to just stab it in the back like this? I mean, through the cover. You know what I mean.”

Lucius withheld his sigh. One of the things he valued most about his Harry was his sense of fairness and justice. He hadn’t thought that would apply to this younger version of Potter and the diary, but perhaps Harry had only managed to stab it with the fang the first time because he was in the midst of battle and on the verge of dying.

Or it could be the Horcrux reaching out to try and find a way to survive. So Lucius didn’t answer the question _before_ he stabbed the diary. There was a hideous shriek, and the black liquid that welled up was more disgusting than any blood Lucius had ever seen. He moved a step away and spelled the floor so that the liquid seeped into that instead of his boots.

“Um. Mr. Malfoy?”

This time, Lucius turned to face Potter, and shook his head gently when he saw the almost desperate face the boy tilted up to him. “What you must remember, Mr. Potter, is that artifacts like these are _objects_ , not people. No matter that they might sometimes sound like people, or talk like them. It is no more immoral to destroy them than it is to break a cup or a vase. Do you understand?”

Harry took his time looking back and forth between the book and Lucius, as if he wanted to make absolutely sure that no one was making up his mind for him in a way that could influence him. But in the end, his mouth tightened, and he nodded.

“Good.” Lucius squeezed his shoulder for a second, and then tucked the fang into his own pocket. He would let Harry make the decision on taking the diary. He was already reaching for it, and the world around him turning fuzzy, so presumably the timeline was reasserting itself to make sure the diary would be delivered to Dumbledore.

Lucius intended to have the fang hilted in silver and other purifying metals, and then use it as a weapon in some other conflicts. He could already imagine how it would make a difference.

The timeline allowed him to stay until he was in the corridor outside Dumbledore’s office, and then he shook Potter’s hand solemnly and continued on his way, to become a shadow springing through time with the sound of an enormous _tick_.

*

Lucius was a little surprised to find himself coming out of the whirl at the Quidditch World Cup. He had assumed he would surface next in Harry’s third year, when he would be more kind and not demand the execution of the hippogriff that had beaten Draco.

But no, he was here, the night he had helped bait the Muggles and recoiled from the sight of the Dark Mark cast into the air—not because he loathed it as he did now, but because it was too soon, and it might cause someone to suspect him. He was standing with his white mask in one hand and Travers staring at him with a wrinkled brow.

“Well? Put it on, Lucius.”

Lucius looked up with a faint sneer. “And _advertise_ what we are doing here, Travers? Do you think me that stupid?”

Travers fell back from him with a recoil that made his own mask fall from his hand. “What’s wrong with you, Lucius?” he muttered, staring at him from beneath a curl of dusky red hair. “You can’t think that we should leave the Muggles alone. I mean, they’re _Muggles._ They don’t deserve any mercy.”

“I might think that, Travers,” Lucius said. He was quiet on the subject of Muggles these days, but honestly, even as Harry’s lover, he had to think about them very little. Harry had thrown himself into the wizarding world wholeheartedly and rarely considered returning to the world he had grown up in. “And I might also think that it is a _stupid_ thing to do here, with so many high-ranking members of the Ministry in attendance.”

“Why would they care—”

“Including _Aurors,_ Travers.”

Travers uneasily glanced around, and the other two Death Eaters, dressed in their robes and masks, did the same. “Well, I mean,” Travers said cautiously after a second to listening to the darkness. “None right now.”

“If you believe that I will take the risk to relieve your boredom, you are mistaken,” Lucius responded, and used his wand to change his robes back to ordinary black ones. “Excuse me.”

He turned and walked rapidly away from his old comrades. It could be that the timeline would adjust it so that they would simply conduct the Muggle-baiting without him, but so be it. _He_ was going to be far from here and not even a suspect in the chaos that would erupt in a few minutes. His adjusted memories told him that he had already nodded at Potter in the top box of the Quidditch World Cup a few hours ago.

Potter had given him an earnest look—probably because he wouldn’t have seen Lucius since his second year—and then smiled back and nodded a little, too.

Lucius smiled as the world folded around him again. The clock had worked; he only needed to be present at moments in the timeline when he had to make an active choice. Things that would naturally change as a result of his earlier actions simply occurred, and time turned and plunged in the direction of the brighter path he had envisioned.

Loud ticks sounded in his ears as the folding seized him and wrung him like cloth.

*

When he appeared on his knees in the graveyard, bowing to Lord Voldemort with the silver Death Eater mask firmly clasped around his face, Lucius understood why. Other than perhaps the battle in the Department of Mysteries—which wouldn’t happen in the same way in this adjusted timeline—this was the most important moment when he had acted as an enemy to Harry himself.

Voldemort began to pace in front of him and the others, expounding on his methods of immortality and how much he despised them for not actively working for his return. Lucius didn’t listen. The ticks of the clock were louder than any of Voldemort’s words.

That, and the intense, silent screaming in his ears as his eyes searched the graveyard and found Potter tied tightly to a gravestone.

Lucius had been here once himself, and yet he had somehow missed the utter pallor of Harry’s face then, how he struggled against his bonds even when he should have been slumped in defeat and exhaustion, and the burning glare he directed at Voldemort’s back. Lucius swallowed. This boy was not his lover, but he had the seeds of the personality that Lucius had fallen in love with.

He clutched his hand around his wand. He couldn’t risk changing too much, because that would mean altering the timeline beyond repair and maybe changing the future in ways that would mean he’d never be with Harry. And yet he couldn’t leave Harry there to suffer and, if he recognized Lucius, believe that one of his friends was betraying him.

From the fixed gaze he was directing towards Lucius, he believed that already.

Lucius wanted to snort when the obvious solution came to him. _Of course. Interfere subtly._

When Harry was unbound and set on his feet, Lucius wove together a braid of grass directly behind Voldemort’s feet. Harry darted his gaze at it, but then immediately turned away so that he was looking at Voldemort instead.

_That’s right. Think about who would do that, who would wish you well._

“Bow to death, Harry—”

“I WON’T!”

Lucius’s spine tingled as he watched Harry resist Voldemort’s Imperius Curse. That was a sign of such strength that he couldn’t believe he had missed it the first time around. Voldemort stepped back in his shock, and his heels became caught up in the braided grass that Lucius had woven together.

He stumbled. Lucius knew he wasn’t the only Death Eater watching with open mouths as the greatest Dark Lord since Grindelwald sprawled on the ground.

This young Harry was wiser than the Harry of Lucius’s time had been. He immediately leaped over the prone form of Voldemort and raced towards the still body of Cedric Diggory. Lucius felt a distant regret that he hadn’t arrived in this moment in time to prevent the young man from dying, but he hadn’t caused the death and couldn’t be held responsible for preventing it.

Harry snatched the Triwizard Cup with one hand and Cedric Diggory’s arm with the other. Just before he vanished into the maze of colors that signaled the Portkey working, Harry turned his head, and Lucius caught his eye.

Harry gave a brave little nod back. He disappeared, and Lucius was left with the bone-deep contentment that Harry had guessed correctly about what his friend had done for him.

The timeline concentrated around him and snapped tight on his limbs then. Lucius was more than happy to retreat and leave his older self, or the new blending of selves that they had become, to live again through the Dark Lord’s Cruciatus.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has become longer than expected as I bring the timeline forwards, so it will have a third part, to be posted tomorrow.

Lucius held the Death Eater mask to his face as he ran through the Department of Mysteries. He had “arrived” after the beginning of the battle, which meant he would already have cast a few curses at Harry and his friends. He had only minutes, at most, to make up for that.

He dodged through the shards of broken prophecies that littered the floor and into the room that held the fluttering Veil of Death. Although he didn’t remember coming here until later in the battle, Harry was in here now, backed up against a wall with Granger and the two Weasley children. That was not as Lucius remembered, but then, there was every chance that his interference in the timeline had changed this particular moment as well. He took off his mask and said, “Mr. Potter.”

“You’re Lucius Malfoy!” blustered Ron Weasley. He sounded a little uncertain. Lucius didn’t smile at that, but he wanted to. Yes, that was one of the effects his changing of time had had; after all, Weasley would have seen him close at hand only at the Quidditch World Cup, since Lucius had not fought with his father at the bookshop.

“Yes.” Lucius focused on Harry. Harry held his wand parallel to the floor, not really pointing at Lucius, but his eyes were filled with uncertainty. “Can I count on you to remember our friendship?” Lucius asked. “To remember how we defeated the basilisk together?”

“What?” Granger and the Weasleys exclaimed. Granger tried to go on to talk about something, probably concerning how she hadn’t known there was a basilisk involved in the story of Harry’s life at all, but Lucius had had enough of that, and cast a Silencing Charm on her. Ron Weasley promptly tried to end it. He failed, of course. Lucius’s spells were stronger than a schoolboy’s.

“Mr. Potter?” Lucius repeated, trying to ignore both the sounds of the battle behind him and the ticking of the clock in his head.

Harry considered him with deep eyes, and then finally nodded. “Fine. You have two minutes. Talk.”

Lucius bowed his head and spoke swiftly. “The Dark Lord sent us to retrieve the prophecy. He will be on his way soon. You should flee before then.” There was every chance that that way, Harry might avoid being possessed, and perhaps Sirius Black might avoid falling to his death. If he did, at least Harry would not have to witness it.

“And how are we supposed to do _that_?” snapped the female Weasley.

Lucius went ahead and Silenced her and her brother, then looked at Harry again. “I have a Portkey here that will take you to the Minister’s office,” he said, taking it from his sleeve. He’d enchanted it long before, in the original timeline, when he might have to visit Fudge suddenly should the Aurors raid his house. “You may not be able to convince him that Death Eaters are here, but at least you will be safe.”

“Neville and Luna—”

“I will keep them safe myself,” Lucius promised. While he had never cared much for the Longbottom boy or the Lovegood girl, they were Harry’s friends. That was the only passport they needed to his goodwill.

Harry hesitated one more time. Then he asked, “And what happens if Fudge never learns that Voldemort is really back? Could we send him down here and get him a glimpse of Voldemort that way?”

“If you can persuade him to come, then you may do so,” said Lucius. He was unsure that Cornelius would listen to Harry when he’d prosecuted him for underage magic use last summer, but he couldn’t predict how this changed timeline would work out, either.

Harry nodded, and stared at him for a second, before determination crossed his face and he took the Portkey. He curled one hand around Granger’s arm; she already had hold of the two Weasleys. A second later, the Portkey activated and all four of them disappeared.

Lucius turned and adjusted his mask back on his face. From the rapidly-nearing footsteps, he knew the greatest test of his acting ability was yet to come.

Sure enough, Bellatrix burst into the room, turning her head eagerly back and forth, and completely ignoring the whispering veil behind Lucius. “Itty bitty Potter!” she sang. “Where is he, Lucius? And his delightful baby friends!”

Lucius fought to keep from curling his lip. He couldn’t remember why he had ever considered his sister-in-law a competent Death Eater. “Members of Dumbledore’s Order appeared and took them away,” he said, channeling the disgust into his voice and letting her think it was for Dumbledore. “A Portkey. They threatened to return.”

Bellatrix never looked at anyone’s eyes or face except Voldemort’s for long, and so had lost the ability to tell when someone was lying. She pouted. “They ran away? That’s not fair! I suppose we will have to enjoy ourselves with the other two in the big room.” She cackled and ran out of the room again, her robes and hair whipping behind her.

Lucius shook his head in silent scorn and followed. He did pause to Transfigure a surprise hiding in his pocket into the likeness of a prophecy orb. One way or another, this night would change things significantly, which meant that it was the last night in this time that he would have to pretend to be on the Dark Lord’s side.

When he stepped into the large room crowded with broken prophecy orbs again, his Dark Mark burned. Lucius dropped into a kneeling position without looking up. He did dart one eye over to the side and note Lovegood cowering in front of Dolohov. Longbottom sat next to her, cradling a clearly broken arm and looking lost.

Lucius saw no sign of their wands. He grimaced. Well, if he got them out of here with no more casualties than their wands, he doubted their present incarnations would blame him _too_ much.

“My faithful followers.” Voldemort’s voice hissed even worse than it had in the graveyard. Lucius wondered if his sanity had declined further than then. Perhaps so. “Did _anyone_ manage to retrieve Potter or the prophecy?”

The gentleness on those last words wasn’t a good sign for anyone. Lucius bowed from his kneeling position, and Voldemort turned towards him at once. “My Lord,” Lucius said softly. “The Order of the Phoenix carried Potter away, but not before I took the prophecy from him.” He held out the false orb.

“You didn’t tell me that! You didn’t tell me that! Only about Potter!” Bellatrix was on her feet, jigging in place, glaring at him. “ _I_ should have had the privilege of giving the prophecy to our Lord! _Me,_ not you!” She tossed a _Crucio_ at Lucius, who dodged it without bothering to rise.

“ _Crucio_ ,” Voldemort snapped at Bellatrix in return, and examined the orb against the background of her agonized screams. His mouth was contorted in a wide, ugly smile. “Well done, Lucius. My faithful servant.”

Lucius bowed again, and saw Voldemort turn the orb over, presumably to examine it for the names that he knew should be there. Lucius gripped his wand and released the Transfiguration on the false prophecy orb.

The hedgehog Lucius had been carrying in his pocket found itself gripped and held in Voldemort’s hand, and first bit him and then curled itself into a prickly ball. Voldemort screamed—for a great Dark Lord, he was childish when it came to pain—and dropped it. Meanwhile, the other Death Eaters were trying to aim their wands at the creature and look for the attack they thought was coming and run around. Mostly, they were getting in each other’s way.

Lucius rolled smoothly across the floor, beneath the height of the curses blasting through the air, and grabbed both Longbottom and Lovegood by their arms. Then he bent and touched the bottom of his jaw to another Portkey, this time a pendant around his neck.

They disappeared, but Lucius glanced back in time to see Voldemort’s wide crimson gaze fixed on him.

“ _Traitor_ ,” he said, in a guttural voice that faded as Lucius and the two children reappeared on the carpet in the main drawing room of Malfoy Manor.

Soft, slippered feet hastened towards them, and then Narcissa was standing in front of Lucius, bending down to help him to his feet. “What have you done?” she asked softly, staring at him with wide eyes.

“Betrayed the Dark Lord,” Lucius said, and grimaced as a bolt of pain struck through his arm. He would have to do something about that, soon. He turned around and nodded to Longbottom and Lovegood. “Mr. Longbottom has a broken arm. If you could summon Isky to attend to him?”

Narcissa nodded and called for their healer elf. The whole time, she was looking at Lucius in that quiet, searching way she had. It was the same way she had looked at him the day they married and the day Draco was born. Then, Lucius had known she was looking for signs he would be a good husband and a good father. This time, he wasn’t sure.

He looked back fearlessly, calmly. He had had a good life with Narcissa, although by Draco’s fifth year in their original lifetime, they slept apart and pursued other lovers discreetly. He said, when a few seconds had passed, “It was the right choice.”

“Yes, it was,” Narcissa said, and for the first time in a decade, she gave him a smile like the one she had given him on their wedding day.

Then she turned to reassure Longbottom and fuss over Lovegood—Narcissa melted around small blonde girls who resembled the daughter they would never have—and Lucius closed his eyes and let the ticking bear him away.

*

“What does this letter mean? What’s a Horcrux?”

Lucius took a step away from the spin of the moments that had brought him here, and faced Harry. The young version of him stood with his arms folded and his skeptical gaze fixed on Lucius. They were in a small, warded space near the lapping Black Lake, and the nearly-full moon hung overhead.

Lucius swallowed. He had altered time far enough by now that Harry and Draco’s last two years at Hogwarts would be entirely different, but he still couldn’t live through them completely, given the clock’s tendency to slice time into small parts. His father’s and grandfather’s legacy was a risky one, as their letters had warned him. He would have to try to catch up on the context that continued to happen around him and not betray that, as far as he was concerned, he had gone straight from Malfoy Manor to this meeting with Harry.

“A Horcrux is an object like the one that you and I destroyed with the basilisk in your second year,” Lucius told him quietly. “You remember the diary? It had a shard of the Dark Lord’s soul in it.”

Harry’s folded arms dropped, and he stared. Then he asked, “And—how did you know about these?”

“After the Dark Lord asked me to guard one of them, I became curious about what exactly it was. None of my research during the first war paid off. I was too busy then and too worried that the Dark Lord would discover what I was doing and kill me for it. Only after he apparently died could I do the research. It still wasn’t complete when we destroyed the diary, but the diary’s reaction on being destroyed confirmed it for me.”

“You didn’t tell me anything about it all these years?”

“I thought it might have been the only one,” Lucius said quietly. “Obviously, since the Dark Lord returned, that is not the case. I completed my research shortly before I decided to betray him in the Department of Mysteries.”

Harry’s gaze softened. “Thank you again for saving Neville and Luna.”

“I would do far more than that, now that I have chosen a side of the war that makes sense.” _And for your future self,_ Lucius thought, but it would never be time to confess that. He honestly wasn’t sure why Harry had decided to forgive him so easily in the future, but then, Harry often forgave where he didn’t need to, it seemed.

Harry shifted and cleared his throat, his blush making Lucius wonder. “How many are there?”

“Counting the diary, seven.” Lucius nodded as he watched revulsion flash across Harry’s face. “I know. It’s disgusting. And while we can get rid of four of the other six in the same way we did the diary, I am—not sure what to do about the other two.”

“Why not?”

“The other two Horcruxes are living,” Lucius said. “His snake, Nagini. And—”

“My scar.”

Lucius had once wished in the past that he had been there when Harry had discovered that he was a Horcrux. Now, he took that wish back. Lucius’s own breath stopped as he watched Harry sag into the horror, wrapping his arms around himself, one hand rising as if he would claw the Horcrux out of the scar on his forehead.

Lucius had only taken one step forwards, though, before Harry looked up and caught a huge gulp of air, shook his head briskly, and focused on Lucius. “What can we do?”

Lucius closed his eyes and reminded himself that this was not his Harry, not yet, although if the timeline changed the way he wanted it to, then it should work out so that _his_ Harry was even happier than he had been in their shared future. “I believe that if Nagini’s body was totally destroyed by basilisk venom or Fiendfyre, she might be killed. And if you stood before the Dark Lord and had him cast the Killing Curse at you, you would survive and the Horcrux would be destroyed.”

“Um, but why?”

“Because that shard of soul would absorb the curse.” Lucius met his incredulous eyes. “I know. It sounds mad. But I think the shard inside you is a tiny one, which makes it even less stable than the rest of the Dark Lord’s soul. _You_ are whole and alive. The unstable shard should be more prone to dying.”

“You _think._ It _should_.”

Lucius only nodded. His mouth ached with the desire to say that he _knew_ he was right and Harry would survive this, but he could never explain exactly how he knew. Only Harry’s trust in him was letting him get away with pretending that his own research had uncovered the existence of the Horcruxes.

Harry stood gazing into the distance. His eyes were thoughtful and opaque; Lucius couldn’t read them at all. Then he turned back and asked, “What are the other Horcruxes besides me and Nagini?”

Lucius explained quietly about Voldemort’s obsession with Founders’ artifacts and the existence of the Ravenclaw diadem, the Slytherin locket, and the Hufflepuff cup. The Gaunt ring he attributed to Voldemort’s family history. He didn’t mention the Resurrection Stone. He knew this Harry had never heard of the tale of the Deathly Hallows, and he would have too much to explain if he tried to talk about it now.

Harry spent some time staring into the distance as if he assumed that he would find the artifacts on the horizon. Then a soft chime sounded next to him, and he started and drew his wand to cast a _Tempus_. “Shit. It’s longer than I expected to be gone. Ron and Hermione are going to wonder where I was.”

“It’s up to you if you want to bring them in on this,” Lucius told him.

Harry glanced at him. “Of course not—not yet. I didn’t bring them in during second year, either, and they would want to know why I thought I could trust you. And then I would have to explain things I don’t want to explain.”

“Why _do_ you trust me so much?” Lucius had to ask. “I mean, enough to keep me secret from your friends. I know the Department of Mysteries convinced you I was on your side.”

Harry tilted his head. “People have had secrets from me,” he said, his words like drops of water falling on stone. “Now that I know about the Horcruxes, I’m convinced Dumbledore does, too. He said something about Voldemort transferring his powers to me that only makes sense in that light. And Ron and Hermione didn’t tell me anything last summer, and Sirius doesn’t tell me everything, and—” He shook his head. “I want something of my own.”

The words made Lucius flush as if he had drunk warm tea. It was a long way from a romantic declaration, but knowing he belonged to Harry, in some way, eased his impatience to belong to him again. “Thank you.”

Harry blinked at him, and then gave him a more suspicious look, as if he could sense how much this meant to Lucius. Lucius didn’t care. He could already hear the ticking drawing closer again, and he maintained his smile until Harry nodded and started back to the school.

And Lucius fell into the middle of a maelstrom the color of pearls.

*

“Mr. Malfoy? What are you doing here?”

Lucius blinked and came roughly back to himself. He was standing in a room piled so high with rubbish that the tottering piles—flashing with imitation jewels and false gilding, he couldn’t help noticing—tilted as if about to fall on his head. There was a bust in front of him with a diadem slung over its ear. Lucius noticed the likeness to Ravenclaw’s ancient diadem at once.

And Harry was standing in front of him, holding out his hand as if to claim the diadem. Behind him were Granger and the male Weasley, with their mouths open, much the way they had looked in the Department of Mysteries.

“My apologies,” Lucius said, bowing a little. Harry’s outstretched hand gave him the clue as to why he was here. “I created a charm that would pull me to your side in some emergencies. It doesn’t work all the time, but it did this time.” He reached out and gently took Harry’s wrist, pulling it away from the diadem.

He thrilled a little at the warm skin underneath his fingertips, because he was a Malfoy and he had long since stopped lying to himself. But he didn’t caress Harry, and he dropped his hand the minute it was free of the diadem’s nagging pull.

“What emergency is this?” Granger sounded as officious as she ever did, although perhaps a little less so than was usual when Lucius showed up to her house to collect Harry when he was too magically exhausted or drunk to Floo home.

“You were about to touch a Horcrux with unshielded skin.” Lucius talked to Harry, because he wanted to. “What kind of idea is that?”

Harry blushed and looked him straight in the eye. “You touched the diary with bare skin!”

From the way that Granger and Weasley tried to speak, Harry had just opened up a storm of questions. Lucius Silenced them negligently, as he had in the Department of Mysteries, and faced Harry with a faint smile. “And only for a moment, and only with full foreknowledge of what would happen should the Horcrux inside it grasp hold of me. No, Harry. I would much rather be with you to help you take care of the Horcruxes than have you go hunting them yourself.”

“Well, all right.” Harry still looked mulish, but he didn’t bother ending the spell on his friends, although he had enough power now to do so. “But how are you going to destroy the Horcrux if you don’t have a basilisk fang with you?”

“I never said that I do not,” Lucius pointed out mildly, and drew the silver-sheathed and hilted fang from his pocket.

Granger was almost hopping up and down in her need to interfere. Harry glanced at her and removed the Silencing Charm this time. Granger immediately burst out, “What are you _talking_ about? What is Mr. Malfoy _really_ doing here? Why do you have a basilisk fang—”

Lucius did something that he knew would shut her up more effectively than a Silencing Charm. He focused on the diadem and stabbed the fang down as hard as he could.

The minute he hit the gem in the center of the delicate circlet of silver, a wailing note arose. Lucius would have dropped the fang and clapped his hands over his ears if he had a whit less discipline. As it was, all the children except Harry cowered and did exactly that.

Lucius watched coolly as the black blood spilled out of the diadem and dripped down the sides of the bust. Then he nodded and turned to Harry. “I will give you the dagger so that you may have it when you destroy the other Horcruxes. As I said, I do not know if it will work against a living one.” He extended the knife.

Harry accepted it, his hand lingering for a moment in Lucius’s. Lucius smiled. He could not say it was not pleasant, these fleeting moments of contact in the changed timeline.

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said. He didn’t back down or look away shyly now. “And you know where some of the other Horcruxes are, don’t you?”

“I do.” Lucius inclined his head.

“Then—would you come with us to hunt them? I don’t know everything about Horcruxes, as we proved today.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t want to endanger my friends.”

“How do you know _Mr. Malfoy_?” Weasley demanded.

“I would be happy to come with you,” Lucius answered quietly. “Only tell me when you’re ready to commence the hunt, Mr. Potter.”

“Harry, we have to tell Dumbledore—”

Lucius openly rolled his eyes, which apparently was enough to shut up Granger by itself. “You might want to tell them certain things, Harry, and why you kept the secret of the Horcruxes from your Headmaster for as long as you did.”

Harry nodded slowly at him, his mouth curving, and then opening to say something else. But all Lucius heard was a loud _tick_ , as the clock bore him away to another moment.


	3. Chapter 3

“Father. I need to talk to you.”

Lucius staggered a little as he stood up from behind his desk, because the clock had dropped him abruptly and he had expected to find himself facing Harry, not Draco. His son gave him a wary frown. “Father?”

“I’m well enough,” Lucius said. “I caught my foot on the edge of the desk, that’s all.”

Apparently, their relationship had changed enough in the past few years for Draco to accept that excuse, because he smiled and sat down in the chair in front of Lucius’s desk. “Father, I know that you were reluctant to let me go back to Hogwarts after you defied the Dark Lor—I mean, You-Know-Who. And we talked about me studying at home next year.”

Memories shimmered and then became real in Lucius’s mind, although he had to manipulate his mental shields carefully so that they didn’t completely replace his ones of the previous timeline. Yes, he and Narcissa had debated taking Draco out of Hogwarts, but it hadn’t happened. Instead, Draco had found a small room that he occupied himself and defended outside the Slytherin dungeons. “Yes. Do you want to stay at Hogwarts next year?”

“Yes! And, Father, I’ve come for the Malfoy betrothal ring.” Draco’s head was high, and pink streaked his throat. “I’ve found the woman I want to marry.”

Lucius blinked, and asked, “Have you?” He felt a distant rush of warmth, both for the fact that Draco in this changed timeline was brave enough to ask him something like that, and for the fact that if Draco was in love with a woman, then he could not have fallen in love with the Harry of this changed world.

_Both Father and Grandfather said that using the clock was risky._

“Yes. Ginny Weasley.” Draco tensed his muscles as if he expected Lucius to lunge across the desk at him and slap his cheek.

Lucius liked to think that he would never have done that, but he couldn’t discount the possibility for the man he had once been. He smiled at his son. “Congratulations, Draco. You took that piece of advice I once gave you about the Weasleys to heart, did you?”

Startled color flooded Draco’s cheeks, and he cleared his throat. “Yes, I did. She loves me, and I love her. We’re going to get married as soon as she’s graduated Hogwarts. Even if the war is still going on.” He threw Lucius another glance that dared him to object.

Lucius only smiled some more as he stood. There was the strong chance that Ginny Weasley wouldn’t have the lingering attraction to Harry that had happened in the original future, then, and for which she always threw Lucius dark looks when she thought he wasn’t going to notice. “Then come with me, Draco. Both you and your bride deserve the ring.”

The world convulsed around him, Lucius calmed his mind so he retained both sets of memories, and he was rushed to his next destination.

*

“I can’t do this, Mr. Malfoy. It’s too hard.”

“Tell me what’s wrong, Harry.” In Lucius’s head reverberated both the solemn ticks of the clock and the recent memory of a knock on the door that had awakened him from bed and made him rush downstairs in his dressing gown. Narcissa watched from the grand staircase for a moment, and then turned and shut the door, leaving him alone with Harry at the bottom of the stairs.

“We found Hufflepuff’s cup,” Harry whispered, lowering his hands. Lucius swayed a little from the impact of the despair in his eyes. His own Harry had never looked like that. “But it’s in Gringotts. The Lestrange vault. No one has ever broken into Gringotts and escaped.”

“I suspect they did, as a matter of fact,” Lucius said coolly, a memory that he might not have grasped otherwise coming forwards. He had in fact intended to retrieve the cup himself, but then, he had thought it would be the last Horcrux except for Nagini and Harry. “There was a break-in to Gringotts during your first year, was there not? Someone searching for the Philosopher’s Stone? That person escaped and was never caught.”

Harry gaped at him. “How did you know about that?”

“Give me some credit for putting things together,” Lucius said, smiling gently at him. “Even if it’s mostly hints that you dropped without realizing that you were doing so.”

Harry turned as pink as Draco had when asking for the betrothal ring, but nodded. “All right. But I have no idea how he escaped.”

“I do,” Lucius said. The memories that he needed were there, and the _knowledge_. He suspected he wouldn’t have it at all without the changing of the timeline and the forcible stirring of his mind that was happening, but then, he wouldn’t have been in this situation if not for the changing of the timeline, either. “There were two personalities in the body that broke into Gringotts.”

Harry gaped at him.

“You are not the only one who dropped hints he should be more careful of, Mr. Potter. Voldemort did much the same.”

Harry nodded and straightened, the fire springing back into life in his eyes again. “All right. So what do we do? And why would two personalities do it?”

“Gringotts’s defenses work by focusing on identity,” Lucius explained, his mind speeding ahead. “They do have defenses in the building to pierce illusions and Polyjuice and the like, but even those work by looking for a hidden identity under the surface and revealing it. They cannot cope with two personalities in constant flux.”

“Brilliant. But that still doesn’t tell me how _we’re_ going to do it.”

Lucius smiled at him. “You have never heard of the Two-Minded Curse?” Of course Harry had not, because Lucius had only that moment made it up. But Harry had shown a fortunate tendency to trust his “research” so far, and Lucius had no means to tell him the truth.

“No. What does it do, Mr. Malfoy?”

“It will enable someone to pass the defenses who can hold two distinct sets of memories in his mind, as if he’s two different people. All I need to do is drink a potion that contains some Pensieve memories from a different person and cast a certain spell.”

Harry nodded, his eyes so bright with trust that Lucius bit his lip. He still couldn’t tell Harry that he actually came from the future. There was no time for _that_. “All right, Mr. Malfoy. Thanks. Do you think—do you think that you can have the cup soon? I think Dumbledore is starting to suspect that I haven’t been telling him things. He’s questioning Ron and Hermione.”

“And perhaps trying to read it out of your minds?” Lucius cursed the fact that the nature of the clock meant that he could not offer to tutor Harry in Occlumency, as he had in his future.

Harry straightened up. “What?”

“Legilimency,” Lucius said, as he felt the walls warp around him. This moment with Harry was almost ended. “Occlumency. There is a book I’ll send you. You should learn the art of defending your mind.”

Harry obviously wanted to question him more, but the clock gave a great booming chime that even Harry might have been able to hear, and Lucius was in that memory no more.

*

Lucius walked calmly, confidently, into Gringotts. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, and requested politely that a goblin accompany him down to the Malfoy vault.

He waited until they were settled into the cart as comfortably as possible, and then called up his memories of the past timeline and set them into play in his head, invoking the only remnant of the man he had once been. The man who would have slipped a Horcrux to an eleven-year-old girl, the man who had demanded a hippogriff’s execution for attacking his son, the man who had returned to the Dark Lord’s service if not enthusiastically.

He could feel the magic of Gringotts pause, uncertain what to make of him. A ball of black light drifted towards him, and the goblin in the cart glanced over its shoulder.

Lucius laid his wand against the goblin’s back and wordlessly cast the Imperius Curse. The mere action again called up the man he had become, since the past one had never done something like this during the war.

The defenses of the bank were swinging over him like great pendulums, no more or less weighty than the clicks of the clock. The goblin obeyed when Lucius told him to take him to the Lestrange vault. He would probably need to recast the Imperius Curse when they passed through one of the magic-cleansing waterfalls, but if that was the most inconvenient thing about this expedition, Lucius would be pleased.

He kept changing his mind each time the defenses tried to hone in on him, thinking of past memories or new ones, and the ball of darkness that was following them blew apart into a dissipating pool like octopus ink in water. By the time they arrived at the Lestrange vault, he’d needed to recast the Imperius Curse twice.

He stepped out of the cart and faced the door that locked the Lestrange vault. This was the test that he had only been ninety percent sure he could pass, as opposed to the ninety-nine percent certainty that he could fool the bank’s identity-finding wards.

He stepped forwards and deliberately dropped the shields that kept his two sets of memories separated from each other.

Roaring, ringing chaos consumed him. He remembered speaking harshly to his son and more gently; he remembered Draco proposing to Astoria Greengrass and telling him that he meant to marry Ginny Weasley; he remembered parting from Narcissa after the war when he wanted to date Harry and she wanted to go to France, and he remembered living with her now.

In the middle of that madness, he reached out and touched the door of the Lestrange vault.

There was a long moment when he could hear many different things, and he hastily pulled his hand back from the vault door and lifted his shields again. Then the door gave a shiver and melted.

His shields held.

Lucius breathed out. Bellatrix had been insane long before she went to Azkaban, certainly the last time she had accessed this vault. Calling up his own kind of madness and forcing the wards to engage with it had worked. The goblins’ magic was very good, but not perfect. It couldn’t distinguish between two mad minds, and it always chose the most prominent characteristic in the identities of those wizards it was supposed to detect. Bellatrix’s most prominent one was easy to imitate.

For someone as accomplished as he was, anyway.

Lucius stepped into the vault, looking alertly about. He saw the cup at once, and he could also see the shimmer around it that marked it as cursed. An oddly juvenile set of curses, to make it burn and duplicate itself, but then, Bellatrix’s madness had not always served her well in more than the matter of making bank vault doors easy to open. Lucius disabled the curses with an easy twist of his wand and Summoned the cup. It soared straight at him and into the small black velvet bag Lucius was holding open.

Lucius slammed the bag shut and ignored the way that the cup tried to reach out to him, naggingly, insistently. The cup could do what it liked. Lucius had better things to do than succumb to an impatient Horcrux.

He turned and walked out to the cart where the goblin was waiting. Another irritation: the clock made him wait through the whole of the ride back through Gringotts, alternating his two sets of memories in his head, before it bore him away.

*

“Will you lot _shut up_ for a second?”

Lucius was not entirely surprised to find himself seated on a couch in his own main drawing room, the place where he had brought Lovegood and Longbottom a few hours ago in his own personal time, but—a quick glance through the windows at the rich, full leaves on the trees—yes, it must be nearly a year ago in the new timeline. He turned back to Harry and gave him a reassuring smile that drew an answering one from Harry right away. Granger and Weasley, standing behind him with scowls, at least didn’t look as if they would have to be magically Silenced this time.

“Yes?” Lucius asked calmly.

Harry swallowed and fixed pleading eyes on him. “So we destroyed the cup. And my godfather found Slytherin’s locket in his own house, of all places, and we’ve destroyed that, too. But—I think Professor Dumbledore figured out where another Horcrux was and went after it himself. His hand is blackened, and he’s wearing this big old ring that he didn’t have before. And he wants to start showing me images of Riddle’s past, although I don’t know how _that_ helps.”

“The ring I told you about.” Lucius raised his eyebrows. He had assumed that he would have changed the timeline enough for that to avoid happening, but he couldn’t say that he would mourn the old man overall. “Now that you think about it, why do _you_ believe that he wants to show you those memories of Voldemort’s past?”

Harry thought about it, and his face darkened. “So that he could tell me about the Horcruxes without telling me.”

“You don’t know that!” Granger interjected.

“That’s a mite paranoid, mate,” Weasley added.

Lucius only held Harry’s eyes, and saw resignation in them. He nodded slowly. “I could ask him about the Horcruxes directly, but I think he would be cryptic. And if he did know how much I knew…”

“He would _Obliviate_ you,” Lucius said, and his eyes flickered for a second to Weasley and Granger. Harry scowled at him, but didn’t shake his head. He knew as well as Lucius that if they _did_ attempt to carry word of Harry and Lucius’s meetings to Dumbledore, then they would have to forget it.

“So.” Harry clenched his hands into fists. “Can you think of some way of getting to the snake? I know that you can’t go to Voldemort since you’re not a Death Eater anymore. And none of us can think of anything, either.”

“Allow me.”

Lucius turned in shock. Narcissa was standing behind him, in the door of the drawing room. She had left him and Harry alone at their previous meeting—and at others in Malfoy Manor that his memories were filling in for him like sand being poured into an hourglass—so he had assumed she would do the same thing now. But instead, she stood there with her arms folded and her face as smooth as the porcelain sculpture’s that her mother had given them for their wedding.

“You need not,” Lucius told her, ignoring the way Weasley and Granger drew closer together and Harry stiffened.

“But I wish to.”

“This is my fight, not yours,” Lucius said, holding her eyes. He tried to force the knowledge he had into his expression, even though Narcissa was not a Legilimens. They had agreed, without speaking of it, that she should remain free and uninvolved in his betrayal. That way, if she ever did need to return to Voldemort and take Draco with her, she stood a chance of being believed.

“I am sick of it being your fight,” Narcissa said clearly, her eyes shimmering like mirrors. “I will not back off and you cannot force me to,” she added, when Lucius’s hand twitched towards his wand. “Trust me to know what I want and that you are better off leaving this entirely to me.”

“You do not even know how to destroy the serpent.”

“Then you may tell me that. And leave the destruction to me.”

Lucius sat there, looking at his wife and not knowing what to say. She had always cared for Draco, and for him even after they had stopped sharing the same bed, and for the family reputation. Nowhere in any of that could he see the willingness that she was exhibiting to take this risk. Something must have changed, but rifling through his new sheaf of memories did not tell him what.

Narcissa took a step towards him and raised a quick silencing ward around him and her alone. “He would have Marked Draco,” she murmured. “Draco has been receiving threats from his Housemates about it. He threatens my son even though we broke free of him. Let this be _my_ fight.”

Lucius hesitated. But he knew that if he tried to push Narcissa out of the way, she was likely to come back into the fight at the worst possible moment and in the worst possible way. She would interfere, or distract him, or perhaps even change her mind on her own and do something that harmed Harry if it would protect Draco. Lucius knew she loved Draco more than anything else, despite how careful she had always been to show Lucius that she valued him, as well.

Looking into her face, he asked, “Would you be willing to swear an oath to reveal nothing of what I tell you to anyone else?”

“Yes.”

“That would _include_ Draco.”

Narcissa gave him a small, annoyed, patient glance. “I would trust that you would pass on to Draco what you have told me, if something should go wrong.”

Lucius nodded sharply. He had no idea if she would succeed, but he had obviously made the decision or taken the action that he had come here to accomplish. Already, the walls were thinning and the air growing cloudier. He dismissed her silencing spell and turned back in time to see Harry glancing back and forth between them.

His eyes had gone opaque again, the way they had when Lucius was telling him about Horcruxes. But after a second, he nodded.

And what else his friends might have objected after that, Lucius didn’t get to hear, as the clock chimed him to a new destination.

*

“Did you know?”

Harry was standing in front of him on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. There were screams in the distance and the sight of trampled, blood-stained mud close at hand. Harry stood with his hand held out.

The Resurrection Stone gleamed in the center of his palm.

Lucius took a deep swallow and met Harry’s eyes, which gleamed like shards of broken glass. “I told you that you might be able to survive the Killing Curse if Voldemort cast it at you,” he said. That was his best guess for what was happening at the moment.

“Not that. I did _that_.” Lucius had to bite back a smile at the snap of indignation in Harry’s words, but it was a brittle snap. “I mean—did you know that I would master the Deathly Hallows?”

“No,” Lucius said, and it was pure honesty. As it was, it seemed his blended self had never told Harry about the Resurrection Stone being in Gaunt’s ring. And he had had no idea if, in this timeline, Dumbledore would leave the Stone to Harry or if Harry would manage to win control of the Elder Wand in the same way.

In fact, it could _not_ be the same way, now that he thought of it. He trusted that his son was not a secret Death Eater who had been told to rid the world of Dumbledore. Lucius was curious, but now wasn’t the right time to ask for a story that he was probably already supposed to know.

Harry took a deep breath that sounded as if it tore up most of his lungs and looked away. Lucius dared to step forwards and rest a hand on Harry’s shoulder in sympathy. Harry shivered for a second. Then he said, not looking at Lucius, “You were the only one who always told me the truth. Dumbledore didn’t. He did want me to stand and face Voldemort and let him lob the Killing Curse at me, but he used his _portrait_ to tell me that I was a Horcrux, and that was when I went to confront him after not finding any other way to get rid of the one in me. I don’t understand why he couldn’t simply speak up when he was alive.”

Lucius’s hand tightened. There were few things he understood as little as he understood Dumbledore’s motives. He couldn’t say that to Harry, though, not when Harry was grieving. He stood there, and held him, and didn’t speak.

“And then he willed the Stone to me,” Harry continued, speaking in a mumble. “And he told me how Kingsley had actually Disarmed him before he died, because he was convinced Dumbledore was trying to commit suicide and wanted to stop him, so I had go to the Ministry and find Kingsley and duel him to get the Elder Wand. I did it. I—it was horrible, some of the things Dumbledore said.”

Lucius waited. Harry added, “He knew about you.”

Lucius nodded grimly. He supposed he should have known that, given that he’d been in or close to Hogwarts for a few moments in this time.

“He told me that I was a fool to trust you, and I should have let him hunt the Horcruxes by himself until the ring hurt him, and then I should have gone and hunted them with Ron and Hermione. I told him that I wouldn’t even have known what Horcruxes _were_ without you, and he said—he said that he was disappointed in me, that he would have told me if I’d only given him the time.”

Harry flinched with his head down, and Lucius gripped both his shoulders this time. When Harry gave him a miserable look, Lucius shook him a little and said, “It doesn’t matter what that old fool of a portrait said. _He_ was the disappointing one, keeping such important secrets from you and then expecting you not to listen to someone who would tell them to you. You never have to see him again. You never have to speak to him again.”

Harry blinked, and then said, “But what about the Deathly Hallows?”

“I don’t know what mastering them means.” Again Lucius was telling the truth. Harry had never been able to figure out what it meant that he was Master of Death in his original timeline, either, except that perhaps it might have helped him survive Voldemort’s Killing Curse. “But I can tell you one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“What matters most is that you are _you_. Harry Potter. And that you’re here, and your enemy is gone.” Lucius let the full warmth of what he felt for Harry inflect his smile and voice for the first time. “You’re alive.”

Harry caught his breath with a curious high sound, and then took a step towards him. Lucius didn’t move away, didn’t disdain the wavering hand that Harry lifted to his cheek or the hesitant way he leaned up to kiss Lucius on the mouth.

Of course, a second later, he pulled away, flushing and averting his eyes. “I shouldn’t—you’re married—”

Lucius caught his hand. “Narcissa and I have long since made our own arrangements in these matters,” he said softly. “If you want to, then you should. I am flattered that you _want_ to with me, when I am so much older than you and such a stranger.”

“You’re not a stranger,” Harry said stubbornly, his jaw thrust out. “You’re a friend. You have been since—for a long time. And you’ve risked so much to help me, maybe more than anyone. And you’re the only one who told me the whole truth.”

Lucius felt guilt squirm in his stomach at that, because he had not told Harry the truth about the timeline or anything connected to it, such as his “research” that was actually future knowledge. But he had told him the truth about everything he _could_ reasonably tell, and as Harry said, that was more than anyone else had done for him in this world.

And he was not unselfish enough to refuse.

“The _whole_ truth,” Harry said again, and his eyes gleamed for a moment with a strange intensity. Lucius opened his mouth to argue.

But when Harry leaned in again and offered his mouth for a kiss instead, Lucius took it, gently easing him back against a tree. Harry was quicksilver in his arms, trembling and warm and insistent, even though he also looked as if he was reconsidering his actions every six seconds.

Lucius went slowly. He touched Harry’s shoulders and chest, and waited each time before he eased his hand further down. He unbuttoned Harry’s shirt and learned, relearned, the curves of muscle there and the way that pinching Harry’s nipples made him buck forwards and his erection harden rapidly. And he kissed Harry constantly, long drugging kisses that Harry reciprocated enthusiastically, all but smashing his chin into Lucius’s.

In the end, it was Harry who took Lucius’s hand and drew it in between his legs.

Lucius cradled him and worked him gently, pumping him up and down, watching as Harry’s face became flushed with embarrassment, wonder, pleasure. His hand linked around Lucius’s and squeezed almost hard enough to hurt, then suddenly yanked down. He gasped, “Yes, that’s it, almost enough, enough, _there_ —”

Watching Harry come apart in his arms was as beautiful as it had always been. Lucius leaned his forehead against Harry’s and watched as he shuddered and spent himself. Harry sagged back against the tree and panted a little, and Lucius kissed him again and reached down to attend to himself.

Harry was quicksilver again, his hand getting there first. “I want to,” he said, eyes narrowed at Lucius again as if he assumed that Lucius would forbid him.

Lucius drew back, pleased and unable to hide it. “Very well,” he murmured, holding Harry’s eyes, and Harry bit his red lips but kept looking at Lucius all the time as he took hold of him and drew him, slowly, out of his robes.

Lucius blinked, several times, and threw his head back at the end. Harry started as Lucius’s cock jumped in his hand, and started again when he came, probably from the sudden warmth and wetness on his fingers, but he never looked away.

When Lucius’s immediate need was satisfied, he leaned in and kissed Harry one more time. Then he said gently, “Your friends will probably expect to see you soon. You may wish to clean up before you go to see them.”

“What?” Harry was blinking at him, afloat still on the force of his kisses, and then he glanced down at his hand. “Oh, yeah.”

He huffed softly and stepped back from Lucius, smiling in a way that made Lucius wonder if he regretted what he’d done. But he’d barely opened his mouth to ask it when Harry glanced up, caught his eye, and seemed to understand what he was going to ask.

Harry shook his head violently. “Don’t think that!” he snapped at him. “I meant it when I said that you’ve been friendly to me and told me the truth. I trust you. I—like you.” From the blush that swept his cheeks, Lucius wasn’t sure that even Harry knew how much. “I don’t know what happens from here, but live in the moment, okay?”

Lucius felt his expression gentle. Harry could not understand how much living in the moment would mean to him, or how much Lucius was doing that right now, more than most other people he would meet. “All right. I will see you again.” He made that as much of a demand as he dared, rather than a question.

Harry grinned at him. “I can predict that future.”

He turned and walked back towards Hogwarts. Lucius hoped that he would remember to clean his hand and trousers before he got there.

He had no chance to see if Harry did or not, because the world vibrated, and the immense ticking sounded down the corridors of his soul until he didn’t know if it would end.

*

Lucius opened his eyes. He sat, once again, in the chair in the Rose Drawing Room that he had begun from. But his hand was empty, and when he turned it over and flexed his fingers, only the cramps from winding the key in the back of the clock remained.

He stood for a second, head bowed, letting the new memories flood in. He knew how Narcissa had destroyed Nagini, from her telling him, the daring way she had pretended to betray Lucius and had come close enough to the Dark Lord to strike out with an enchanted dagger Orion Black had once owned. The blade had been coated in an enchantment that made it kindle Fiendfyre on whatever it struck. Narcissa had survived only because Voldemort had been too concerned with his burning snake to chase her immediately. They had separated soon after the end of the war, much as in Lucius’s original time.

Draco had married Ginny Weasley. Lucius remembered their wedding, and the glares of her family, as if he had stood there under the white marble arch entwined with flowers and watched the bride in her shining golden robes and the proud, nervous smile on Draco’s face—as he had.

Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger still sometimes thought it was strange that Lucius was in love with Harry and Harry in love with him, but they were much less constrained and snappish around Harry now. They knew that Lucius had helped them win their war. The only conflict that still sparked up between them sometimes was that they visited Dumbledore’s portrait, and never understood why Harry refused to come with them.

Luna Lovegood had maintained a strange friendship with Narcissa, and they had a regular meeting for tea every full moon, Harry had told him. Lucius would not pretend to understand what they talked about.

Neville Longbottom had accepted Lucius’s presence in Harry’s life first, and he had given them a specially-bred white rose with delicate petals like a peacock’s plumes that had produced furiously-growing seeds in their garden.

Sirius Black was still alive, and tended to brag about his sexual exploits with Remus Lupin in a way that gave Lucius continued practice in casting the Silencing Charm. However, he was more than willing to listen to the man’s praise of his godson.

They lived—

They lived in the same place. And although their love had become real earlier than it had in their original timeline, it had hit many of the same low places, and climbed many of the same heights.

Except that Harry had more love and laughter in his life, and less stress, because Lucius had gone back in time.

Lucius stumbled to his feet, blinking, and turned to face the doorway. The two sets of memories danced through his head one more time, and then settled quietly into place, one in each half of his mind. He would be able to forget the old ones if he wanted to, but Lucius did not think he would choose to. He would prefer to remember why he had taken the risks, as well as the risks themselves.

Harry was standing in the doorway of the Rose Drawing Room, watching him.

Lucius blinked, and said nothing. Harry walked over to meet him and clasped his hands. Those lines that Lucius had so hated to see scribbled into his face had eased.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” Harry whispered.

Lucius reeled back, but only a step. Then Malfoy composure helped him regain his balance, both mental and literal, and he asked, “How could you?” He _knew_ things had changed. If Harry was aware of them, then that could not be so.

Harry turned and led him further into the Manor, away from the Rose Drawing Room, down a corridor that curved past alcoves and doors that Lucius was sure he had never seen before. Which was ridiculous, of course. This was his home and his family’s home, and he had explored every inch of it before he was five.

But this was still a new place, this small, round, dusty room with an unmoving portrait on the wall. In fact, the man in it was asleep.

Lucius stared at him. His hair was dark, and shaggy, if so long that it looked more tamed than the hair on Harry’s head. The shape of his face was familiar, but the lines in it even more pronounced and painful than the ones _his_ Harry had worn before Lucius went back in time. There was a long, jagged scar down the left side of his face that looked as if it came from fangs, and one of his hands was missing.

“What…”

“Sometimes,” Harry said, his voice thick and soft, “someone travels back in time to make the future better. Sometimes—sometimes the future is so terrible that it erases itself of its own volition, and leaves very little trace behind.”

He turned to face Lucius, tilting his head up with trembling fingers. “I have the memories of all three lives, Lucius. The one I lived through the first time, where you didn’t help me and Dumbledore was the one who told me about Horcruxes. The one where I was _this_ man, who went back much further than the war with Voldemort to make sure that the world didn’t wither and die because of an evil greater than Voldemort. And the lifetime _you_ gave me, the happiest one, where certain other things happened that meant the dark future never would. We prevented it together.”

Lucius blinked at him. “And how were you able to travel in time when I know that a Time-Turner only goes back a few hours and only a Malfoy can use the clock?”

Harry gave him a weary smile, and the Elder Wand appeared in his hand as if forming itself from the air. “There’s a reason I had to master the Deathly Hallows, and it was because I’d always mastered them.” He flicked his hand, and the wand disappeared again. “And because they’re the only artifacts not linked to a particular bloodline powerful enough to conquer time.”

“Then…when you said that I’d always told you the whole truth…”

“I meant it. I _knew_ , Lucius. I don’t know where the circle begins or ends.” Harry stepped towards him and cupped his face the way Lucius had with his younger self. “Did you think that you were the only one who could risk everything for someone he loves?”

Lucius drew in a difficult breath. He glanced again at the sleeping man in the portrait, and knew then that he would never wake. Lucius would know of that future only what Harry chose to tell him.

“And what happens now?” he asked. He wondered if they would have to pay a penalty for Harry’s use of the Hallows, or his use of the clock, or both.

“Now?” Harry smiled, and it was as joyous as a phoenix. “Now we can go on into the future that we fought for. The only one that’s going to happen.”

“With the memories that we choose to keep?”

Harry nodded. “With only those.” His eyes were gentle and hard at once, and Lucius knew Harry probably never _would_ tell him of that dead and dying future.

Unless Lucius asked.

Lucius thought about it, while he held Harry’s hands, both of which were whole and intact, and looked into his face that bore only one scar. Then he said, “Let us live in the moments we earned.”

Harry leaned in and kissed him, with all the warmth of their first love and the passion of the younger Harry from this new timeline and, for all Lucius knew, with the determination of the man he had become in some far future. Then, together, they walked out of the room.

Lucius didn’t look back.

_Yes, after all, it is time to ignore portraits, and clocks, and any other artifacts of the finished past. We have what we wished for._

**The End.**


End file.
